Students across the country are walking out of school Wednesday to protest gun violence, the biggest demonstration of activism since last month's massacre at south Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Related Content

South Carolina’s largest school district says it’s going to reprimand several hundred students who participated in a national walkout to protest gun violence at schools.

Greenville County Schools spokeswoman Beth Brotherton said Wednesday that students who participated in the walkout will be cited for cutting class. She said school records show that about 530 students participated at about a dozen high schools.

The high schools with the most participation were J.L. Mann Academy in Greenville, with about 200 students walking out; and Maudlin High School with about 180. Overall, the district has about 77,000 students.

District officials had said before the walkout that they were discouraging students from participating and didn’t plan to allow news media to cover the activity.

2:30 p.m.

In Las Vegas, home to the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, more than 350 students left classes as part of a nationwide school walkout and rallied on the steps of the city’s oldest high school with signs reading “Enough is Enough” and chants like “NRA, stay away.”

Tanya Abarico, a Las Vegas Academy of the Arts junior, noted the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas and said students want policies and reform, not thoughts and prayers.

Student body President Darian Fluker invoked shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 and the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. She calls the walkouts a march for student lives.

1:15 p.m.

Students at Columbine High School in Colorado are participating in the nationwide school walkout to protest gun violence.

About 250 students left school and gathered on a soccer field next to the building Wednesday.

They held red, white and blue balloons and released them as they read the names of the 17 people killed last month at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the worst high school shooting since the 1999 massacre at Columbine.

The names of the 13 people killed at Columbine were also read before the students observed a moment of silence.

12:50 p.m.

In northwestern New Mexico, where two students were gunned down by an armed intruder at their high school in December, hundreds of their classmates gathered at the Aztec High flag pole for a “walk-up” rather than a walkout.

The student council had asked school administrators for time in their schedule Wednesday so they could honor the 21 students who’ve been killed in school shootings in recent months —including their two classmates — and to talk about 21 pledges they can take to make their campus safer and to get involved.

Principal Warman Hall said the students wanted to feel empowered but didn’t want a contentious political debate or demonstration.

12 p.m.

At some schools, students didn’t walk outside, but instead lined the hallways, standing in silence and wearing the school colors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which was the site of last month’s mass shooting that killed 17 people.

Others gathered in school gyms and auditorium.

In Goshen, Indiana, student’s formed a heart on the football field. In Yarmouth, Maine, students walked out despite freezing temperatures and snow.

11:45 p.m.

In Michigan, students made sure people knew about the social media hashtag associated with the walkout. Students at Crestwood High School in Dearborn Heights used their bodies to write out "#Enough."

Part of the protest at Wekiva High School in central Florida, students gathered around 17 empty desks, one for each person killed in Parkland.

Orange County school officials allowed student leaders to plan events at each school.

"OCPS students who organized remembrance events today have varying political views but felt strongly about honoring Parkland victims & have been respectful of each other’s beliefs. We support all of our students - those who choose to participate and those who don't," the district said via its official Twitter account.

11:10 a.m.

In the nation's capital, House and Senate Democrats were preparing to walk out of the Capitol in solidarity with the students. Sen. Bernie Sanders also praised the students from the Senate floor.

He said in a tweet, "Thank you to the young people throughout this country who are walking out today and who have the courage to do what the United States Congress is not doing: lead us forward to stop the slaughter that we have seen from coast to coast due to gun violence."

Thank you to the young people throughout this country who are walking out today and who have the courage to do what the United States Congress is not doing: lead us forward to stop the slaughter that we have seen from coast to coast due to gun violence. #NationalWalkoutDaypic.twitter.com/JfdcCc0Ifk

Some students on the east coast have returned to the classroom after their protest, while others in the central time zone are beginning theirs.

10:35 a.m.

Hundreds of students at Parkland High School, outside Allentown, Pennsylvania, walked out of class and headed to the auditorium for a rally dubbed #parklandforparkland. That school and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, share more than a name.

Stoneman Douglass freshman Daniel Duff, who survived the shooting by hiding in a closet but lost seven of his friends, is the cousin of Collin and Kyleigh Duff, who are brother and sister and go to Parkland High in Pennsylvania.

The Duff siblings have been selling #parklandforparkland bracelets, raising more than $10,000 for the Florida shooting victims, and Daniel Duff described what it was like to live through the shooting in a video that was shown at the rally.

10:35 a.m.

Police outside Atlanta patrolled Kell High School, where students were threatened with unspecified consequences if they participated in the nationwide walkout to protest gun violence.

A British couple walking their dogs went to the school to try to encourage students, but they were threatened with arrest by police officers if they didn’t leave the campus in Marietta, Georgia.

10:30 a.m.

Many schools in New England are closed because of the nor'easter that blew through the region this week, but students are still protesting. One group in Massachusetts planned on marching to the State House. Another demonstration is planned for Boston's Harvard Square.

10:05 a.m.

Students are lining up outside of the White House and marched the streets of Washington, D.C., chanting, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, the NRA has got to go!" and "What do we want? Gun control! When do we want it? Now!"

President Donald Trump, who is currently on the West Coast, released a plan last week to promote safety in schools. It faced criticism from gun control proponents, however, who said it didn't go far enough and bowed to pressure from the NRA.

Elsewhere, students were sitting in silence to honor the victims of the Florida shooting.

10 a.m.

Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland, Fla., are beginning their protest, as are other schools across the eastern U.S. They planned on staying outside for 17 minutes, one for each victims in the attack.

Students in some districts could face discipline for the walkouts, but they're getting support, as well.

In Kentucky, Jefferson County Public Schools sent a letter to principals encouraging them to talk with their students about alternative options to a walkout. However the district added that they will support students and their safety no matter what.

“I’m very proud of them for standing up and doing something of this nature,” said Jennifer Lovingood, whose daughter is participating in the walkout.

Lovingood had some questions when her daughter, Myah, 17, said she planned to walk out of class.

“My first question was, ‘Do you think that will interference with you graduating?’” Lovingood said. “She said, ‘Well, Mom, I really don’t care because 17 (people) were lost at one school and two kids were lost in our state.’”

Original story:

From Maine to Hawaii, students are walking out of school Wednesday to protest gun violence in the biggest demonstration yet of the student activism that has emerged in response to last month’s massacre of 17 people at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In nearly 3,000 protests nationwide, students from the elementary to college level are taking up the call in a variety of ways. Some planned roadside rallies to honor shooting victims and protest violence. Others were to hold demonstrations in school gyms or on football fields. In Massachusetts and Georgia and Ohio, students said they’ll head to the statehouse to lobby for new gun regulations.

The coordinated walkouts were loosely organized by Empower, the youth wing of the Women’s March, which brought thousands to Washington, D.C., last year. The group urged students to leave class at 10 a.m. local time for 17 minutes — one minute for each victim in the Florida shooting -- and suggested demands for lawmakers, including an assault weapons ban and mandatory background checks for all gun sales.

“Our elected officials must do more than tweet thoughts and prayers in response to this violence,” the group said on its website.

But each community was urged to shape its own protests, and while parents and teachers in many districts worked together to organize age-appropriate activities, school administrators had mixed reactions. Some have applauded students for taking a stand, while others threatened discipline.

Districts in Sayreville, New Jersey, and Maryland’s Harford County drew criticism this week when they said students could face punishment for leaving class. In Pensacola, Florida, Superintendent Malcolm Thomas ordered students to hold an in-school assembly instead, telling them they could discuss voting and mental health issues, but not guns, and saying that political banners would not be allowed.

“You can’t make political statements, it can’t be a pro-gun or anti-gun assembly,” Thomas told the Pensacola News-Journal.

Free speech advocates geared up for battles.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued advice for students, saying schools can’t legally punish them more harshly because of the political nature of their message. In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Texas, some lawyers said they will provide free legal help to students who are punished. The ACLU of Georgia’s guidance letters to districts said “The United States Supreme Court has long held that students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate’.”

This nationwide action is one of several protests planned for coming weeks. The March for Our Lives rally for school safety is expected to draw hundreds of thousands to the nation’s capital on March 24, its organizers said. And another round of school walkouts is planned for April 20, the 19th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado.

After the walkout Wednesday, some students in Massachusetts say they plan to rally outside the Springfield headquarters of Smith & Wesson, where students and religious leaders are expected to call on the gun maker to help reduce gun violence.

At Case Elementary School in Akron, Ohio, a group of fifth-graders organized a walkout with the help of teachers after seeing parallels in a video they watched about youth marches for civil rights in 1963. Case instructors said 150 or more students will line a sidewalk along a nearby road, carrying posters with the names of Parkland victims.

The walkouts have drawn support from companies including media conglomerate Viacom, which said it will pause programming on MTV, BET and all its other networks for 17 minutes during the walkouts, and allow students to temporarily take over MTV’s social media accounts.

In suburban Atlanta, one of Georgia’s largest school systems announced that students who participate might face unspecified consequences.

But some vowed to walk out anyway, understanding that accepting punishments is part of what can make civil disobedience powerful.

“Change never happens without backlash,” said Kara Litwin, a senior at Pope High School in the Cobb County School District.

The possibility of being suspended “is overwhelming, and I understand that it’s scary for a lot of students,” said Lian Kleinman, a junior at Pope High. “For me personally this is something I believe in, this is something I will go to the ends of the Earth for.”

Other schools sought a middle ground, offering “teach-ins” or group discussions on gun violence and working to keep things safe. Officials at Boston Public Schools said they arranged a day of observance Wednesday with a variety of activities “to provide healthy and safe opportunities for students to express their views, feelings and concerns.” Students who don’t want to participate could bring a note from a parent to opt out.